You can increase your Virtual Memory. Short of modding a memory stick, that is the only safe and stable way to not only fool your pc, but sort of speed it up. Albeit not much. With RAM being so cheap these days, I dont see why anyone cant scrape up about $30 fo a 256MB DIMM.

go to Start>Settings>Control Panel. open System, go to Advanced tab. Click on the Settings button in the Performance box. on the new window, again go to the Advanced tab, and then click the Change buton.

I like a total of 4 gigs of Virtual; gives my computer room to work.

Change the button to Custom Size, and then use one of the numbers for desired amount of VM. 4 gigs is as high as you can go i believe.

for 1 gig = 1024 in both boxes
for 2 gigs- 2048
for 3 gigs- 3072
for 4 gigs, 4096 in both boxes.